International Journal of Computer Information Systems,
Vol. 2, No. 2, 2011
Remote Access of Building Management System
Alarms Using Android Mobile Devices
M V Uttam Tej
M.Tech Computer Science ,SCSE
VIT University, Vellore, Tamil Nadu
uttam.mudiam@gmail.com
Dhanaraj Cheelu
Assistant Professor (Senior Grade) SCSE,
VIT University, Vellore, Tamil Nadu
dhanaraj.cheelu@vit.ac.in
Abstract— As Internet communication technologies are growing
up. Web Services are rising up as a popular middleware
technology used to integrate heterogeneous building automation
system on Internet. Android Technology with web services has
gained popularity recently in the mobile Application market. The
present problem is impossibility of operator’s movement from
the BMS Control center. Now the solution was bought up by
using android technology and web services. The aim of this
project is remote access of alarms and acknowledging those using
android application and web services.
Keywords-component; Building Management System; Web
Services; SQL Server; Android
I. INTRODUCTION
A Building Management System (BMS) is a computer
based system aims at developing the control and management
of both mechanical and electrical systems in buildings. More
generally the interaction among all kinds of devices is found
there. The core application areas of BMS are handling
traditional services like Lighting, Ventilating, Fire System and
Security System.
A BMS is a combination of both software and hardware.
Generally software is used to configure the system in
hierarchical manner and it also uses protocols like C-bus,
Profibus, BACnet, Modbus etc .In the traditional system the
operator use to access the alarms and acknowledging them
sitting at control center. Now in the present system operator is
allowed freely to move and to access and acknowledge alarms
using android application and web service technology.
The Present paper is classified mainly into 5 main
sections. First section mainly focuses on Web Services and
Android Technology. Second Section throws light on Existing
Scenario. Third Section Deals with tools used for developing
the application and also describes about the contents in the
table. Fourth Section Focus on actual work that goes on.
Finally it concludes with the conclusion.
April Issue Page 44 of 81
M.Rajasekhara Babu
Assistant Professor (Selection Grade) SCSE, VIT
University, Vellore, Tamil Nadu
mrajasekharababu@vit.ac.in
P Venkata Krishna
Professor SCSE
VIT University, Vellore, Tamil Nadu
pvenkatakrishna@vit.ac.in
II. TECHNOLOGY OVERVIEW
In this section we describe about the Web Service and
Android Technology used for free movement of operator in all
controlled building area [1].
Web Services is a small part of business logic, located
somewhere on the Internet, that is Accessible through standard-
based Internet protocols such as HTTP or SMTP. They are self-
describing, self-contained, loosely coupled and modular
applications that can be published and invoked across the web.
The main objective of Web Services is to build a technical
layer which is independent of platforms and programming
languages in existing heterogeneous configuration platforms,
depending on the technical layer the applications of these
different platforms can implement the interlink age and
integration between each other[2].
Web Services are based on a “Service Oriented
Architecture” [3]. There are three important roles in this
architecture: Service Provider, Service Requestor and Service
Broker (Figure 1).
The Service Provider is the owner of the service .From
the architectural orientation this is the platform that hosts
access to the service. It is responsible for creating, publishing,
and providing the service.
The Service Requestor is the party that requires certain
functions to be satisfied. From the architectural orientation this
is the application that is looking for and invoking or initiating
an interaction with a service.
The Service Broker is a searchable registry and is
responsible for advertising service. Most services registries
provide classification schemas allowing users to look up
services. Some registries even provide a set of APIs for
programming access. Service requestors can find needed
services and obtain binding information from the service
descriptions either at development time or run time.
ISSN 2229-5208
 International Journal of Computer Information Systems,
Vol. 2, No. 2, 2011

B Programming Languages
Symbian Applications are written using Java Me. We use
.NET CF for Windows Mobile and Android Applications are
primarily written in java and compiled into Dalvik executable
format.

Figure 1. Serice Oriented Architecture

Android [4-7] is the open source mobile application

platform that has the potential high significant importance in
many markets Android is the product of Google and it is the
software stack for mobile devices that includes an operating
system, middle ware and key applications. There are six main
components that provide the building blocks are Activities,
Services, Content Providers, Intents, Broadcast Receivers and
Notifications.
Activities are application’s presentation layer; every screen
in the application will be the extension of Activity class.
Services are invisible workers of the application .There
components run invisibly updating data sources and visible
activities and triggering notifications. Content providers are
sharable data stores. We use intents for simple message passing Figure 3. Comparisons for Java Me, . Net CF, Android
among activities. By creating and registering Broadcast
Receivers the application can listen for broadcast intents that C Number of Users
match specific filter criteria. The Figure below is the North America Smart Phone unit
sales. Only Android sales show significant growth.
Reasons for Selecting Android Mobile Platform:-

The three famous smart phone operating system in mobile

application market are Symbian, Android, and Microsoft
Windows. In this section we compare them with parameters
like
A UserInteface and Availablility
User Interface is an interaction space between humans
and device. The motto of interaction is effective operation and
control of the device. Application Availability mainly deals
with readiness of an application to handle requests and generate
response.

Figure 4. Market Share For Various Mobile OS

Figure 2. Comparisons based on UI and Availability

April Issue Page 45 of 81 ISSN 2229-5208

 International Journal of Computer Information Systems,
Vol. 2, No. 2, 2011
III. EXISTING SYSTEM For example
In the Existing System the current state of problem is Toast.makeText(RemoteAccessApps.this,”Youarenotauthorize
impossibility of operator’s movement from the BMS Control d”,Toast.LENGTH_LONG).show;
Center. He has to sit in the central location and look after the
control of BMS. In the present system the operator is allowed
freely to remote access of all alarms using Android Mobile
Device.

IV. IMPLEMENTATION TOOLS

In the present paper we developed front end application
using eclipse and android sdk 2.2 .we used SQL Server 2005 as
a back end to store alarms. Here web Services are developed in
java using eclipse. Alarms table are present in SQL Server
which stores alarms generated by various systems. The alarm
table contains Serial Number, Alarm name, category, Date of
occurrence, time, status and acknowledgement fields. Here
status specify about the level of emergency.

V. ALARMS WEBSERVICES AND CLIENT

The remote access to BMS Alarms which are stored in SQL
Server is possible through web services [8]. We created such
web services using java and with the help of Eclipse. The web
methods in the present web service are “Alarm Retrieve”,
“Login” and “Acknowledge” methods.
The login method takes 2 arguments i.e. Username and
Password and Alarm Retrieve method takes 3 arguments i.e.
From Date ,To Date and acknowledge both these arguments of
type String where as acknowledge is of type Boolean. This
methods takes three arguments i.e. the Serial Number, Alarm
Name and Category Whenever the Login information is filled
and user press the submit button.
Figure 6. Alarms and Logs Activity
Here user is allowed to specify From Date and To Date.
When he put the cursor on this Text Boxes, Date Picker which
is inbuilt widget in android pops up now he can set the date
using this picker.
After setting both the dates’ .User has 2 types of option that
is achieved by using check Box. When user doesn’t checks the
acknowledge press the button submit. On submit button click
the web service is invoked with these input parameters and it
displays the alarms which are not acknowledged so far. In
present scenario user didn’t acknowledged it.

Figure 7. Date Picker

Figure 5. Login Screen
The login web method in the web service gets invoked and it
takes the user parameters and checks in the database .When it
return successful the user enters into activity call retrieval or
user will be intimated with the pop up message i.e he is not
authorized for this application.
Example:-
SoapObjectRequest=newSoapObject(NameSpace,Alarm
Retrieve);
request.addProperty("fromdate",et.getText().toString());
request.addProperty("todate",et1.getText().toString();
request.addProperty("ack", is.isChecked());

April Issue Page 46 of 81 ISSN 2229-5208


SoapSerializationEnvelope envelope=new
SoapSerializationEnvelope(SoapEnvelope.VER11);
envelope.dotNet = true;
envelope.setOutputSoapObject(request);
AndroidHttpTransport androidHttp = new
AndroidHttpTransport(URL);
androidHttp.call(SOAP_ACTION,envelope)
Object result = envelope.getResponse();
Figure 8. Start Date and End Date
Now the Web Service Interacts with alarm Data Base in
SQL Server and triggers the query based on the input dates.
Here inputs are from date, to date and acknowledge The Result
got is shown in the list view in other activity. Here user has a
provision to select any alarm from the list.
Figure 9. List View of Alarms
Whenever user clicks on any of the alarm list. The activity
will be called with the arguments such as Alarm which we
selected. The Complete information is show to user in the
activity.
For example
Intent I=new Intent (ListAlarm.this, CompleteData.class);
Bundle b=new Bundle();
b.putInt("Alarm",selectedalarm);
April Issue Page 47 of 81
International Journal of Computer Information Systems,
Vol. 2, No. 2, 2011
i.putExtras(b);
startActivity(i);
Figure 10. Final View of Alarm
VI. CONCLUSION
In over two decades IT industry and Building Automation
System Industry have achieved a great success in technology
and market. Using Web Services in BAS industry it saves users
from investment and help them in enhancing utility of BAS
With the development of Internet technologies, as a new and
powerful model for creating apps from reusable models in
distributed area Web Services are helping us in solving upper
problems. In this paper by using android and web services we
proposed a way of accessing remote alarms and acknowledging
them. This solution makes free movement of BMS Control
operator.
REFERENCES
[1] Krejcar, 0., "PDPT framework - Building information system with
wireless connected mobile devices", In Icinco 2006, 3rd
InternationalConference on Infonnatics in Control, Automation and
Robotics Instinct Press, Setubal, Portugal, pp. 162-167 (2006)
[2] S.Wang,Z.Xu,J.Cao and J.Zhang,”A middleware for web service-
enabled integration and interoperation of intelligent building systems,
”Automation in Construction vol,16,pp.112-121,2007
[3] A. Malatras,A.H.Asgari,T.Bauge,and M.Irons, “A Service-oriented
architecture for building services integration”, Journal of Facilities
Management, vol 6,pp.132-151,2008
[4] M.Kenteris, D.Gavalas and D.Economou “AnInnovativeMobile
Electronic Tourist Guide Application,” Personal and Ubiquitious
Computing, vol 13,no.2, 2009,pp.103-118
[5] A.Shabtai,Y.Fledel,and Y.Elovici, “Securing Android Powered
Mobile Devices Using SELinux”, IEEE Security and Privacy,2010
[6] W.Enck, M.Ongtang, and P. McDaniel, “Understanding Android
Security”, IEEE Security and Privacy, vol 7, 2009, pp 50-57
[7] “Gartner Says Android to Become No.2 Worldwide Mobile Operating
System in 2010 and Challenge Symbian for No1 Position by
2014,”Gartner Group,10 Sept,2010
[8] Krejcar,O.,”Full Scale Software Support on Mobile Lightweight
Devices by Utilization of all Types of Wireless Technologies”, In
Mobilight 2009,May 18-20,2009,LNICST Vol 13 pp. 173-184.
F.Granelli,C. Skianis,P. Chatzimisos,Y.Xiao andS.Redana(Eds)
Springer,Heidelberg,DOI 10.1007/978-3-642-03819-8_17(2009)
.
ISSN 2229-5208